3. Accession of Richard.—In 1189, Richard the Lion-hearted, the hero of so many romantic stories, ascended the English throne. The Jews, who had been growing more and more unpopular all through the long reign of Henry II., thought that the accession of this, the most hopeful of his sons, might bring about a favourable change in their position. So to the coronation ceremony there came a little body of Jews, selected by their co-religionists as representatives, from every town in England where Jews had settled. The members of this deputation were all of the richest and most respected class. They were grandly dressed, and were the bearers of rich gifts, which were to be presented to the king in the name, and with the loyal congratulations, of the wholeJewish community in England. They never got the chance of making their contemplated pretty speeches, nor of offering their handsome propitiatory presents. Possibly the sight of so much wealth, brought as a free-will offering, suggested the idea of plunder. If Jews could give so generously, unasked, what might they not give with a little pressure? In this way reasoned the populace, and the result was that the deputation never reached the palace. It was pitilessly set upon and robbed, and one of the number, a Jew from York, named Benedict, was so badly hurt in the course of the rioting, that he reached home only to die of his wounds. In his fright, this Benedict had even submitted to be baptized, but the poor man’s cowardice availed to save neither his life nor his fortune. Perhaps his ‘conversion’ became the means of attracting more attention to him and his neighbours, for although the London outrage was rivalled in various parts of the kingdom, it was at York, on this occasion, that the Jews suffered most of all.History is said to repeat itself, and certainly the story of the fortress of Masada, in 72,[26] has a grim counterpart in that of the castle of York a thousand years later. In that terrible coronation month, the Jews of York had shut up their houses, and tremblingly taken refuge in the castle. The mob surrounded the walls, and resistance became hopeless. Then the Jews of York, in wild fear of the English, like the Jews of Masada in wild fear of the Romans, set fire to the unsheltering walls of the fortress, and headed by their Rabbi, and by an eloquent co-religionistnamed Joachin, killed first their wives and children, and then themselves. Thus the English in the eleventh century, like the Romans in the first, conquered a citadel, to find it garrisoned by corpses. Some say 500, and some say 1,500 Jews were massacred in York alone, in that year 1189. A commission of inquiry was subsequently held, and some punishments were inflicted on the ringleaders. But not on account of the massacres. In the course of the sacking of the Jews’ houses, various deeds and titles to property, of which the value had not been recognisable at a glance, had been burnt or destroyed. The owners were presumably dead. By the law of the land in those days, all such ownerless property reverted to the Crown. The massacre of the missing owners was a fault that leant to virtue’s side, but the careless destruction of the missing records was fraud on the exchequer—a very grave crime indeed.

4. Treatment by Richard.—Richard, probably, showed himself altogether averse from such riotous proceedings. He had lost his coronation presents through it, and the intermittent plundering which went on during his crusading expeditions, he must have reflected, was all a distinct and further loss to the treasury. On his return from captivity he put the whole thing on a legal footing. The Jews were registered as chattels of the Crown, and a special court in the king’s exchequer was set apart for the management of Jewish matters. The amount of every Jew’s property throughout the kingdom was ascertained as nearly as it was possible, was duly entered on the books, and then a scale of tolls and taxeswas drawn up in accordance with this list, and an efficient staff of Jews and Christians appointed to act as responsible collectors. It was a hard system, but it was open and to-be-reckoned-upon robbery, and the Jews were infinitely the gainers by it. Richard was not cruel, nor capricious, nor persecuting. He constituted them ‘his Jews,’ and it was his interest, and it probably was his pleasure, to protect them, and to permit no extra nor unauthorised plunder at the hands of priests or barons or populace. It was unfortunate for the Jews of England that Richard only reigned ten years.

5. Under John.—The dissolute, unprincipled, and untrustworthy John of Anjou succeeded his brother in 1199. During Richard’s frequent absence from England, John had plotted for the crown, and had found Jews very useful in supplying the wherewith for him to keep up the character he had assumed of a liberal, open-handed prince. He had been lavish in profession and in promises of good-will, and the grateful Jews had sought by good offices to keep and deserve the favour of their future sovereign. Lulled into a sense of security by his fair speeches, they had even persuaded many of their rich Continental co-religionists to come to England, and in the first years of John’s reign, so encouraged, the Jews began to hide their money a little less, and to enjoy it a little more. It may be that in their security they were even a trifle ostentatious. And it is possible that the populace had grown irritated at the royal favour shown to the despised Jews, and somewhat jealous of the wealth they now displayed, and of which, for manyyears past, royalty alone had reaped the benefit. Or it may be that such favour as John had bestowed was wholly capricious, and that he had played with his victims as a cat with the mouse she means to devour. At any rate, his mood changed, and in 1210, quite suddenly, without warning or provocation of any sort, all the Jews in the kingdom were imprisoned, and their goods declared to be confiscated. Those who would not disclose the whereabouts of their treasures were tortured, and John is said to have himself stood over a certain Jew in Bristol, seeing tooth after tooth extracted, till a ransom was agreed on for the victim’s right to retain the two or three that were left in his head.

CHAPTER XXV.
JEWS IN ENGLAND (continued).
(1216–1290.)

1. The Next Fifty Years.—Throughout the minority and during the long reign of Henry III. (1216–1272) things grew worse and worse for the Jews. The ‘Hep, Hep,’ had not sounded so often for the last century without leaving echoes. Even when and where the connection of the cry with the crusades had grown somewhat faint, it kept its full and terrible significance for the Jews. Church, and State, and people, all seemed to unite in oppressing them, and each to have its own separate cause and justification for oppression. The Church, which had grown fierce in its fanaticism, hated Jews simply as Jews, and persecutedthem religiously. The State regarded them as a gold mine, to be worked as profitably, and with as little personal or familiar contact, as was possible. The populace, who were necessarily brought into closer relations with Jews than were either the priests or the barons, looked on them with a curious mixture of unwilling admiration and superstitious dislike. They could not but recognise that the superior intelligence and thrift of the despised Jews were at least among the causes which contributed to their greater wealth. It is not pleasant to have to acknowledge that one’s social inferiors are morally and intellectually superior to one’s self. The Jews of England at this period were very different from the Jews of Spain, but there are degrees of difference; low as they had fallen from the level of what Jews should be, they were yet far less ignorant and superstitious than were most of their neighbours. They prayed to God instead of invoking saints, and they trusted in temperance and cleanliness, rather than in doubtful ‘relics,’ to ward off physical ills. Their knowledge, however, like their religion, was often another danger to the Jews. If they tried to teach the child of some Christian neighbour, or succeeded in healing a sick person, or in helping a poor one, any such kindly ministration was more likely to be looked on with suspicion than with gratitude. Jews were compelled, too, in this reign to wear a distinctive dress,and how could the wearers of a white badge[27] move about among their fellows withouta sense of aloofness which must have made any familiar and wholesome intercourse impossible? And often, in order that the royal treasury might be kept well filled, and the ‘protection’ of the king secured, the Jews were forced to prey upon the people. Their neighbours could not have liked them if they would, and thus, Jews were quite alone in the kingdom, left to themselves, without the chance of making a friend among the populace, or the priests, or the nobles.

2. The Caorsini.—Besides enmity and prejudice from Church and state, Jews had, what might be called, professional enemies in a class of money-lenders called the Caorsini. The Caorsini were originally bankers and collectors of the Pope’s revenue, and lived in the town of Cahors, in Italy. Then some of them came to England, and gradually developed into a regular and recognised craft of dealers in money. This, in a sense, was poaching on Jewish ground, and it was hard upon the Jews, because the Caorsini were not fair rivals in an equal and open competition. The Caorsini had the advantage in position, being, as it were, licensed dealers in money; and they had, further, no unpopularity of race to handicap them. Jews, to cover the grave risks to which their property was always exposed, had often to ask a higher rate of interest than contented the Caorsini. This angered the customers of both, and the competition introduced an unhealthy trade jealousy and distrust between the rival money dealers, which state of things pressed, of course, most heavily on those who were already burdened and weakened with the weight of prejudice.

3. The First Jewish M.P.s.—The constant quarrels between Henry and his barons exhausted the treasury, and new means of raising money had to be hit upon. The old accusation of crucifying Christian children was revived, and little Hugh of Lincoln served as pretext for a pretty extensive robbery. But this well-worn device was not wholly satisfactory, being necessarily confined to one locality at a time. In 1240 an entirely new mode was found of raising supplies. A Jewish Parliament was summoned. Writs were issued in due form, no reasons being given for the extraordinary proceeding. The larger towns were to return six Jewish representatives, and the smaller, two.When the newly elected members met, they were bluntly told their business, which was to collect, without the smallest delay, 20,000 marks[28] from among their co-religionists to replenish the royal treasury. The Parliament was then dissolved. These members, of the date 1240, are the very first Jewish M.P.’s in England.

4. Another Device for raising Money.—The supply of Jewish wealth still proved unequal to the constant demand for it, and a little later, Henry, who must have had a really original mind, thought out an entirely new scheme. The Jews, we must remember, were, by constitutional law, ‘his Jews.’ He had got money out of his property by every conceivable way known to conscienceless holders of property; now, why should he not sell it? Profits might be turned over afresh in fresh hands. So actually King Henry III. sold his Jews to his brother Richard, receiving5,000 marks as their price, and, by the terms of this remarkable bargain, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, became the legal owner, with ‘all rights reserved,’ of all the Jews in the kingdom. The terms of the sale would seem, however, to have considered the property rather as leasehold than as freehold in its nature, for presently we find the king reclaiming ‘his Jews,’ and subsequently selling them again to the Caorsini.

5. Under Edward I.—In 1272 the long, cruel reign of Henry ended; and if, like Herod, he had desired that the sound of Jewish weeping should be heard at his funeral, he could hardly have devised surer means of securing that satisfaction than his latest statute afforded. By this statute it was decreed that all real property possessed by Jews, in the form of land or houses, was to be wrested from them, and any mortgages held by them on securities of this sort were to be formally given up and confiscated to the Crown. Edward I. confirmed the unrighteous statute, and to show some aptitude for persecution beyond that of imitation, he made an order that the distinctive badge worn by the Jews, and hitherto white in colour, should henceforward be yellow.